


Sometimes Love Isn't Enough

by RoseByAnyOtherName (badxwolfxrising)



Series: Things That Could've Been [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 16:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3495614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badxwolfxrising/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor knows Rose and Jack's secret, and his reaction isn't quite what anyone expected. Sequel to 'Another Cold Swim'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes Love Isn't Enough

They never should have split up. There were about half a dozen angry soldiers practically on his heels, and he felt like he was probably hopelessly outnumbered.

For once, the Doctor desperately wished he had Jack with him, to help fend off the oncoming siege and to help him with Rose. Rose, who’d been fine running one moment, and then the next… When he’d felt her grip go slack in his own he’d turned to look at her as they ran and had seen her complexion go from its normal rosy pink to pasty white in a matter of seconds. He barely had a moment to ask her if she was alright before she was swooning into his arms. Without thinking about it, he lifted her against him and held her the way you might a child. It was a little bit awkward, but he just held her underneath her knees, and wrapped his other arm underneath hers. His hand was resting on her breast, but he didn’t have time to rearrange because the soldiers were on his ass and he just had to _run_

He held Rose tightly against his body, and he carefully began to use the hand supporting her knees to reach into the pocket that held his TARDIS key as he ran. Gripping the key tightly in his palm, he dodged into some underbrush to buy them some time. He could hear the soldiers crashing through the brush behind him, he could only pray that his respiratory bypass would allow him to keep running long after these men had run out of air. Still, he wasn’t yet sure they weren’t some kind of super soldier, so who knew how long they could run without ever running out of oxygen? The Doctor found it somewhere in himself to run even faster, in spite of Rose’s weight becoming like lead in his arms. Through a copse of trees he saw a familiar and welcome sight; the TARDIS.

He fumbled the key, almost dropped it, but caught it and held it pressed tight against the wood until he could maneuver his hand to grab it. He could hear the soldiers coming through the trees now, and mercifully, he could hear the key sliding home into the lock and clicking open. He pulled the key from the lock, shoved the doors open, and slammed them shut with his back right as the soldiers slammed into the door. They banged furiously against it, but those doors would never give, not even against super human soldiers, if that was even what they were. All the same, he wasn’t going to let them keep pounding away outside. He gingerly laid Rose down on the grating, and set the TARDIS to dematerialize to a clearing a couple of kilometers away. He just had to hope Jack would eventually find them, because he wasn’t going to leave the TARDIS, not with Rose in this state.

Once he had safely landed them in the clearing, he gathered her up into his arms again and took her to the medbay.

* * * * *

When Rose woke up, the Doctor was staring at her intently. She looked around and saw white walls, and realized with a sinking dismay that she was in the medbay. When she caught the Doctor’s gaze, his face went from serious to smiling.

“You’re awake. Absolutely terrible timing for a fainting spell, Rose, but I suppose it all worked out in the end,” he said, mock cheerfulness in his voice.

“Where’s Jack?” she asked, and she realized right away that maybe this was the wrong thing to have said when she saw the wounded expression that crossed over his face. Still, it lasted only a moment before his face just became unreadable again.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“What do you mean you don’t know? He could still be out there! He wasn’t here when you got back?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbows to look at him.

“No Rose, he wasn’t. And to be honest, I was more preoccupied with whether or not you were alright,” he said, irritated. He seemed to be dancing around something else, but he finally said it. “You’re still pregnant.”

Still. As in the knowledge that she was pregnant wasn’t necessarily new or surprising to him. _So he did know_ , Rose thought to herself.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say. The Doctor dropped his gaze and looked away, and she felt her heart breaking, but she continued to tell him anyway because she thought it was important that he knew her version of the truth. “I was going to do it...get rid of it. Jack took me to the place, said it was simple, just a pill and a lie down and it’s all over...but I got there, and the place was so cold, and sterile...and well, alien...I just couldn’t do it. Are you going to take me home?”

He didn’t speak for a long time, and the only sound that broke the silence was the subtle humming of the TARDIS in the background.

“This life, time and space, the TARDIS...it’s no life for children, Rose. Certainly not for raising them, anyway,” the Doctor said finally.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” she said, tears beginning to squeeze out from the corners of her eyes.

“Do you want a baby, Rose?” he asked, his voice gentle.

“No,” she replied miserably. “Not right now, anyway. Not with _him_.” 

The Doctor knew what she meant by this last bit, but of course he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge it, not unless she said something directly. Instead, he brought his hand up to her face and brushed a strand of her hair out of her eyes. He let his open palm rest on her shoulder, and she stared at him like she wanted to say something, although no words came from her parted lips.

“We’ll find a way,” he said, forcing another smile.

“If you say so,” Rose whispered, secretly relieved. “You aren’t angry..about me and Jack?”

“You’re both human, Rose. And I’m...I’m just me, I suppose. And I could never stay angry at you, anyway. You’ve literally torn holes in the universe before, and I forgave you.”

“I know you did. Doctor...I’m really, really sorry. Proper sorry. I...I don’t even know how I let it come to this,” she said sadly. She leaned against him, hoping he would wrap his arm around her. He did, and she sighed.

“Do you love him?” the Doctor asked thoughtfully, and he felt Rose stiffen in his grasp.

“Jack? I love him like a friend. A very dear friend...but just as a friend.”

“A friend that you have intercourse with?” the Doctor asked, matter of factually. Rose could only blush.

“A friend with benefits yeah, as the saying goes. Shagging benefits, in this instance. But just because I shag him… I don’t love him. Not like that,” she said softly.

“He loves you, though. Like that, I mean. You know that, right? Or maybe you don’t know it, that’s why it’s like this for you. Or maybe you do know, but you don’t care. You’re somewhat cavalier when it comes to the feelings of the men who care about you, Rose. Jack, Mickey...others, I’m sure.” He didn’t add himself to that list, although it was somewhat implied.

“Doctor!” Rose replied, pulling back to gape at him in disbelief.

“Well, it’s true,” he said, his voice hard.

“You are angry about it,” she said, realization dawning on her. “You’re not going to come right out and say it...but you are. Why, Doctor? Go ahead, tell me why you’re upset about it?” she challenged, wanting to hear the words directly from the horse’s mouth.

He just stared back at her, his gaze like flint.

“That’s what I thought,” Rose said weakly

* * * * *

“Are you going to eat that?” Rose asked, snatching the packet of crispy noodles out from underneath Jack’s fingers. Seeming to give it a second thought, she also snatched his egg roll as well.

“Um, I suppose not,” he said as he withdrew his hand. He knew better than to fight a pregnant woman over Chinese leftovers.

“S’what you get Jack,” the Doctor said softly. If he was smiling, it was only out of _schadenfreude_.

“You promised me a back rub earlier, Mister. I’m still waiting,” she sing-songed through a bite of her egg roll, looking at Jack as she did.

“I surely did, Rosie. Meet you in entertainment pod seven? We can watch a movie. I’ll make popcorn,” Jack said cheerfully. Rose nodded, and with some help from the Doctor, hoisted herself out of her chair to toddle towards the nearest room with a sofa. Both men enjoyed the parting view as she left them. They sighed in unison, and then shot each other an uncomfortable glance.

“I fucking hate this, Doc,” Jack said finally, sure that Rose was out of earshot.

“Well I guess you oughta have thought of that before you went dipping your wick all willy-nilly and without contraceptives, hmm?”

“No, it’s not just that. I’ve accepted that Rose will bed me while she pines for you-don’t even give me that look, because I KNOW you know how she feels about you. I just fucking hate it. I hate that you two love each other, but refuse to do anything about it. I hate that a woman that I love, but whom only really sees me as a friend is having my baby, and we’re going to have to give it away. I just hate it all, because you know what? None of us are happy. Not a single fucking one, Doc,” Jack said despondently.

“We all agreed this was for the best, Jack,” the Doctor said mildly, though his eyes had taken on that hard look again.

“Yeah? Best for who, exactly?” Jack asked acerbically.

“Best for the baby, Jack, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters. You, me, Rose...we’re all adults, we’ve all made our choices. No reason an innocent life is the one that has to pay the price for those decisions,” the Doctor replied softly.

Jack knew he was right, but hated to admit it. “But it still hurts.”

“And it won’t ever stop hurting, Jack. It will just be one of those things that haunts you in the night until the day you die. You can’t ever take it back, you can only learn from it and hope you do better the next time.”

Jack knew the advice had been meant for him, but he still got the distinct impression that the Doctor might have actually been talking about himself when he said it.

* * * * *

The Doctor ended up delivering the baby.

Rose went into labor prematurely, and started bleeding heavily in the middle of the night. Jack and the Doctor had rushed her to the medbay, and under heavy sedation she delivered a baby boy. Inexplicably, he had blue eyes and blond hair.

“That’s normal,” the Doctor had reassured Jack. “A lot of babies are born with blond hair and blue eyes, the pigment changes later.”

“It’d be nice, if he had my eyes and her hair,” Jack said wistfully, holding the tiny human that was his and yet not at all.

“Um, I beg to differ. I think that’d probably be dangerous to humankind,” the Doctor said, sounding surprisingly good natured. For some reason, Jack had expected this to be a lot harder on the old man.

“Should we wake her up? To hold him, before we...drop him off?”

The Doctor considered this for a while. Jack could see him agonizing over it in his mind. He looked over at Rose laying in the bed, and she was still completely out. Even still, her face look wrought, tired. “Probably not. It’ll just make it harder for her later.”

“Yeah..you’re probably right,” Jack agreed reluctantly.

“It’ll be alright Jack,” the Doctor said softly. “I’ve got just the place to take him, somewhere he’ll be safe and loved.”

“Rose and I could love him, Doctor. Hell, _you_ could love him.”

“That’s not on debate. But sometimes, love isn’t enough. We can’t keep him safe, you have to know that’s true. He will be better off, and so will we,” the Doctor said firmly, holding his hand up to indicate that he’d hear no further protests about it. “Spend your time with him now, Jack. While you can.”

He didn’t wait for the other man to protest, just walked with a heavy heart to the TARDIS console room. Jack had captured it all rather perfectly when he’d said _I fucking hate this_. The Doctor fucking hated it, too. Loathed it, even. But it, like many other things, was inexorable. So instead of wasting more time lamenting over it, he set a course for 13 Bannerman Road, Ealing, London, England, Earth.

If there was one gift he could give Jack and Rose’s son, it was a shot at a fantastic life.


End file.
